I am a political activist who has worked and lived in the West Bank of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. This blog chronicles my time in Palestine and also provides news and analysis about Palestine and the situation on the ground in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Sunday, September 29, 2013

Dear friends,please find below Benjamin Doherty's last blog on Electronic Intifada which highlights an speech by Palestinian activist and political strategist, Omar Barghouti. In the speech, Barghouti discussed the One State Solution (ie. one democratic secular state) and what he calls "ethnic decolonisation" and how Palestinian and Israelis can work together once justice has been achieved to build a state with full formal equality for all.

Earlier this month, an American university professor wrote an editorial for the New York Times about the failure of the two-state solution in Palestine and the need to consider alternatives.

The editorial provoked various discussions in the media, but I was
disappointed that every time someone has this epiphany, the ensuing
discussion neglects the movement-building and dialogue
that have been happening for many years among Palestinians, Israeli
Jews and others who are committed to decolonization and equality in a
democratic secular state.

“Ethical decolonization”

It was serendipitous that I found a video featuring a presentation by Omar Barghouti that dispenses with the “peace process” and “two states” completely and focuses on the ethics and mechanics of decolonization.

Barghouti refers to the work of the Brazilian educator and
philosopher Paulo Freire when explaining the moral responsibilities of
the oppressed, and he proposes “indigenizing” the settler-colonial
population through a process of “ethical decolonization.”

“Indigenizing” the settlers

The argument escapes the common traps about “Jewish
self-determination” and the “Jewish state” by outlining a path where the
settler-colonial population becomes entitled to determine the
future of the state through joint struggle with the indigenous community
and on condition that the settlers abandon their colonial privilege.The excerpt below is edited slightly for readability:

Accepting modern day Jewish Israelis as equal citizens and full
partners in building and developing a new shared society — free from all
colonial subjugation and discrimination, as called for in the
democratic state model — is the most magnanimous, rational offer any
oppressed indigenous population can present to its oppressors. So don’t
ask for more.

Only by shedding their colonial privileges, dismantling the
structures of oppression — the laws and the policies and so on — and
accepting the restoration of the rights of indigenous people of the land
— especially the right of Palestinian refugees to return and to receive
reparations and the right of all Palestinians to unmitigated equality —
only then can settlers be indigenized and integrated into the emerging
nation and therefore become entitled to participate in determining the
future of the common state.

I make a distinction between self-determination for Jewish settlers
in Palestine, which I categorically oppose — never in history was a
colonizing community ever allowed self-determination not in South
Africa, not in Algeria, not in Ireland, not anywhere. Colonizers are not
entitled to self-determination, by any definition of
self-determination, but post-colonialism, post-oppression, after justice
has happened, then we must envision integrating the former colonizers
into a common nation that can determine its future. So they are part of
the future determination of the state if they are indigenized.

The indigenous population on the other hand must be ready after
justice has been reached and rights have been restored to forgive and
accept the settlers as equal citizens enjoying normal lives, neither
masters nor slaves.

Transformative Justice

Barghouti’s talk was part of a round table organized by Networkers South-North
an “organization with a goal to generate, disseminate and mobilize
critical knowledge in the field of human centered development engagement
and values in international cooperation with a particular view for
perspectives from the South.” The entire series of videos from the event
is listed in sequence below.

On 13 September 1993, a beaming US
President Bill Clinton, flanked by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak
Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, stepped onto the lawns of
the White House.

The men were there to sign the
Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements,
also known as the Oslo Accords.

The Accords were heralded as laying
the foundation for interim Palestinian self-rule in the Occupied
Territories, which was supposedly a stepping stone to a Palestinian
state.

It was rubbish. Arafat renounced
the claim of the Palestinian people to 80 percent of historic
Palestine and agreed to postpone negotiations regarding the final
status of Jerusalem, the Occupied Territories, water, sovereignty,
security, the illegal Israeli settlements and the right of return for
Palestinian refugees to the last stage of the “peace process”.

No guarantee was given by Israel
regarding the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination,
national independence and statehood. Israel did not renounce control
over the Palestinian territories it had occupied in 1967, nor did it
agree to withdraw troops or dismantle the colonies it had been
building since the 1970s.

The Oslo Accords were in part an
attempt by the Israeli and US ruling classes to defuse and undermine
the Palestinian popular uprising (Intifada) that erupted in 1987.

The uprising had spread across the
Occupied Palestinian Territories and was led by the United National
Leadership of the Uprising (UNLU), a popular democratic coalition of
Palestinian factions, including Fatah, the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of
Palestine, the Palestinian Communist Party and Islamic groups.

The UNLU called for the formation
of popular committees in each village and town to oppose Israel’s
occupation through a coordinated boycott of Israeli goods and refusal
to pay Israeli taxes, a boycott of working in Zionist settlements and
a general strike and closure of all businesses for designated periods
both in the Occupied Territories and inside Israel.

In response to the Intifada, Israel
placed the Occupied Territories under curfew and instituted a policy
of mass arrests, accompanied by the beating and shooting of unarmed
Palestinian demonstrators and mass exile of Palestinians from the
territories.

In both the occupied West Bank and
Gaza, Palestinian refugee camps were put under siege in an attempt to
force the more than 120,000 Palestinians workers who worked in Israel
to return to work.

Unable to stop the Intifada by
force, the Israeli ruling class reluctantly entered into “peace
negotiations” with the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

While Israel’s signing of the
Oslo Accords has often been depicted as the Zionist state being
committed to peace, the Accords in fact simply provided a more
efficient way for Israel to achieve its long-held strategic goal of
controlling the occupied West Bank and other Palestinian territories.

According to the Israeli academic
Tanya Reinhart, Oslo was “in effect the realisation of Labour’s
long standing Allon plan, by which Israel would keep about 40 percent
of the West Bank’s land and in the rest, the Palestinians would be
allowed to have a functioning autonomy”.

The Allon Plan left Jerusalem
district, Hebron district and the Jordan Valley under Israeli
control, with the remaining territory under Palestinian autonomous
control. Oslo, far from being a stepping stone to a fully fledged
Palestinian state, instead allowed Israel to enact a version of the
Allon Plan, while stabilising and deepening its occupation of
Palestinian territory.

During the 20 years of the Oslo
Accords, Israel has doubled the number of settlers from 260,000 to
more than 520,000 and expanded the area controlled by settlements to
over 42 percent of Palestinian land.

In the weeks leading up to the
anniversary of the White House lawn signing of the Declaration of
Principles, Israel approved the construction of at least 3,600 more
housing units in its illegal colonies in both the occupied West Bank
and occupied East Jerusalem.During the 20 years of the “peace
process”, Israel has also demolished approximately 15,000
Palestinian buildings, including homes, water systems and
agricultural facilities.

A new policy brief released by
Palestinian organisation Al Shabaka notes that in 2009-10, 50 percent
of Palestinians were living in poverty.

The Oslo Accords have caused the
Palestinian Authority and the PLO to become, as Palestinian scholar
Edward Said predicted, Israel’s “enforcer”, helping to deepen
the Zionist state’s economic and political control over Palestine.Yet while the US government, Israel
and the leadership of the PA have continued to push forward a fake
peace and flog the Oslo dead horse, Palestinians have continued their
struggle for self-determination and national liberation. They deserve
our solidarity.

Saturday, September 21, 2013

Dear friends,please
find below my short article published in RedFlag on the Zionist lawfare
attacks on Stuart Rees and Jake Lynch for their principled stand in
support of the Palestinian BDS campaign. The article also includes a
link to the public forum with Stuart Rees in Melbourne on October 3. in solidarity, Kim ***

Kim Bullimore |Red Flag 19-Sep-2013

Since its launch in 2005, the
Palestinian boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against
Israel has gone from strength to strength. There have also been
increased attempts by opponents to undermine the right of
pro-Palestine activists to free speech and freedom of assembly.

Utilising “lawfare” tactics,
the Israeli government and its supporters have sought to exploit the
legal system in order to censor, intimidate and silence critics of
Israel’s occupation and apartheid policies, both inside Israel and
internationally.

While previous lawfare attempts
against BDS in France, England, Scotland, the USA and Australia have
failed, currently in Australia two Sydney University academics –
Professor Emeritus Stuart Rees and Professor Jake Lynch – are
facing possible legal action for their principled stand in support of
Palestinian human rights and the BDS campaign.

Both Rees and Lynch have been
targeted by the Israeli group Shurat HaDin, which lodged a claim
against them and the BDS campaign with the Australian Human Rights
Commission (HRC) on 31 July. While Shurat HaDin has announced it has
dropped its HRC complaint, its representative Andrew Hamilton told
the Australian on 11 September that the organisation intends “to
take the matter to the Federal Court”.

In response to Shurat HaDin’s
attack on free speech and Palestine solidarity activism, almost 1,300
people have signed a pledge in support of BDS, stating that they
would be willing to stand as co-defendants with Rees and Lynch in any
legal action taken against them. On 28 August, students and staff at
Sydney University also held a speakout in support of Lynch and Rees.

Organised
by Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid and Students for Palestine
(Victoria)

***

Since
its launch by more than 170 Palestinian civil society groups in 2005,
the Palestinian Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign
against Israel has gone from strength to strength with trade unions,
student & church groups, artists and others announcing their
support for the campaign. Inspired by the struggle of South Africans
against apartheid, the Palestinian-initiated BDS campaign is
conducted in the framework of international solidarity and resistance
to injustice and oppression and calls for non-violent punitive
measures to be maintained until Israel meets its obligation to
recognise the Palestinian people's inalienable right to
self-determination and fully complies with international law.

With
the growth in support internationally for the Palestinian BDS
campaign, there has also been an increased attempts by opponents of
this non-violent campaign to undermine the right of pro-Palestine
activists to free speech and freedom of assembly.

Utilising “lawfare” tactics, the Israeli government
and its supporters have sought to exploit the legal system in order
to censor, intimidate and silence critics of Israel's occupation and
apartheid policies both inside Israel and internationally. While
previous lawfare attempts to criminalise BDS and pro-Palestine
activism in France, England, Scotland, the USA and Australia have
failed, currently in Australia and France pro-Palestine activists are
facing the possibility of criminal charges for standing up for
Palestinian human rights.

JOIN
US FOR A SPECIAL PUBLIC FORUM:

Special
guest speaker, Professor Emermitus Stuart
Rees, who along with Professor Jake Lynch
from the Sydney Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies are facing
possible legal action for their principled stand in support of
Palestinian human rights and the BDS campaign. Both Professor Rees
and Professor Lynch have been targeted by the Israeli group, Shurat
HaDin who have lodged a claim against them and the BDS campaign with
the Australian Human Rights Commission. Professor Rees will discuss
the current lawfare attacks on himself and the BDS campaign.

Also
speaking at this forum will be Naomi
Farmer, one of the 19 non-violent pro-Palestine
activists arrested in July 2011 during a peaceful BDS picket outside
of a Max Brenner Chocolate Bar in the Queen Victoria Building in
Melbourne. One year after her arrest Naomi, along with the other
arrested activists in a legal victory for pro-Palestine activism, were
acquitted of the substantive charges brought against them. Naomi will
speak about the Max Brenner 19 case and the importance of standing up for
our right to free speech and freedom of assembly.

Joining the
panel will also be Nada Breik,
a Palestinian activist with Students for Palestine who will discuss
the current lawfare attempts taking place inside Israel.

**

Keep
in touch with the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid and Students
for Palestine:

Monday, September 16, 2013

Dear friends, please
find below an excellent article by Palestinian-Australian academic and
activist, Adam Hanieh on the twentieth anniversary of the Oslo Accord,
its impact and how it has facilitated the normalisation of Israel's
occupation and apartheid policies against the Palestinian people.In solidarity, Kim ***The Oslo IllusionBy Adam HaniehJacobin Magazine, September 2013

Adam
Hanieh is a lecturer at the School of Oriental and African Studies
(SOAS), University of London and the author of Lineages of Revolt:
Issues of Contemporary Capitalism in the Middle East forthcoming from
Haymarket Press.

The
Oslo Accords weren't a failure for Israel - they served as a fig leaf
to consolidate and deepen its control over Palestinian life.

This year marks the twentieth
anniversary of the signing of the Oslo Accords between the Palestine
Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Israeli government. Officially
known as the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government
Arrangements, the Oslo Accords were firmly ensconced in the framework
of the two-state solution, heralding “an end to decades of
confrontation and conflict,” the recognition of “mutual
legitimate and political rights,” and the aim of achieving
“peaceful coexistence and mutual dignity and security and … a
just, lasting and comprehensive peace settlement.”

Its supporters claimed that under
Oslo, Israel would gradually relinquish control over territory in the
West Bank and Gaza Strip, with the newly established Palestinian
Authority (PA) eventually forming an independent state there. The
negotiations process, and subsequent agreements between the PLO and
Israel, instead paved the way for the current situation in the West
Bank and Gaza. The Palestinian Authority, which now rules over an
estimated 2.6 million Palestinians in the West Bank, has become the
key architect of Palestinian political strategy. Its institutions
draw international legitimacy from Oslo, and its avowed goal of
“building an independent Palestinian state” remains grounded in
the same framework. The incessant calls for a return to negotiations
— made by US and European leaders on an almost daily basis —
harken back to the principles laid down in September 1993.

Two decades on, it is now common to
hear Oslo described as a “failure” due to the ongoing reality of
Israeli occupation. The problem with this assessment is that it
confuses the stated goals of Oslo with its real aims. From the
perspective of the Israeli government, the aim of Oslo was not to end
the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, or to address the
substantive issues of Palestinian dispossession, but something much
more functional. By creating the perception that negotiations would
lead to some kind of “peace,” Israel was able to portray its
intentions as those of a partner rather than an enemy of Palestinian
sovereignty.

Based on this perception, the
Israeli government used Oslo as a fig leaf to cover its consolidated
and deepened control over Palestinian life, employing the same
strategic mechanisms wielded since the onset of the occupation in
1967. Settlement construction, restrictions on Palestinian movement,
the incarceration of thousands, and command over borders and economic
life: all came together to form a complex system of control. A
Palestinian face may preside over the day-to-day administration of
Palestinian affairs, but ultimate power remains in the hands of
Israel. This structure has reached its apex in the Gaza Strip —
where over 1.7 million people are penned into a tiny enclave with
entry and exit of goods and people largely determined by Israeli
dictat.

Oslo also had a pernicious
political effect. By reducing the Palestinian struggle to the process
of bartering over slivers of land in the West Bank and Gaza Strip,
Oslo ideologically disarmed the not-insignificant parts of the
Palestinian political movement that advocated continued resistance to
Israeli colonialism and sought the genuine fulfillment of Palestinian
aspirations. The most important of these aspirations was the demand
that Palestinian refugees have the right to return to the homes and
lands from which they had been expelled in 1947 and 1948. Oslo made
talk of these goals seem fanciful and unrealistic, normalizing a
delusive pragmatism rather than tackling the foundational roots of
Palestinian exile. Outside of Palestine, Oslo fatally undermined the
widespread solidarity and sympathy with the Palestinian struggle
built during the years of the first Intifada, replacing an
orientation toward grassroots collective support with a faith in
negotiations steered by Western governments. It would take over a
decade for solidarity movements to rebuild themselves.

As it weakened the Palestinian
movement, Oslo helped to strengthen Israel’s regional position. The
illusory perception that Oslo would lead toward peace permitted Arab
governments, led by Jordan and Egypt, to embrace economic and
political ties with Israel under American and European auspices.
Israel was thus able to free itself from Arab boycotts, estimated to
have cost it a cumulative $40 billion from 1948 to 1994. Even more
significantly, once Israel was brought in from the cold,
international firms could invest in the Israeli economy without fear
of attracting secondary boycotts from Arab trading partners. In all
these ways, Oslo presented itself as the ideal tool to fortify
Israel’s control over Palestinians and simultaneously strengthen
its position within the broader Middle East. There was no
contradiction between support for the “peace process” and
deepening colonization — the former consistently worked to enable
the latter.

It is worth remembering that amid
the clamor of international cheerleading for Oslo — capped by the
Nobel Peace Prize awarded jointly to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak
Rabin, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, and PLO leader Yasser
Arafat in 1994 — a handful of perceptive voices forecast the
situation we face today. Noteworthy among them was Edward Said, who
wrote powerfully against Oslo, commenting that its signing displayed
“the degrading spectacle of Yasser Arafat thanking everyone for the
suspension of most of his people’s rights, and the fatuous
solemnity of Bill Clinton’s performance, like a twentieth-century
Roman emperor shepherding two vassal kings through rituals of
reconciliation and obeisance.” Describing the agreement as “an
instrument of Palestinian surrender, a Palestinian Versailles,”
Said noted that the PLO would become “Israel’s enforcer,”
helping Israel to deepen its economic and political domination of
Palestinian areas and consolidating a “state of permanent
dependency.” While analyses like Said’s are important to recall
simply for their remarkable prescience and as a counterpoint to the
constant mythologizing of the historical record, they are
particularly significant today as virtually all world leaders
continue to swear allegiance to a chimerical “peace process.”

One question that often goes
unaddressed in analyses of Oslo and the two-state strategy is why the
Palestinian leadership headquartered in the West Bank has been so
willingly complicit with this disastrous project. Too often, the
explanation is essentially tautological — something akin to “the
Palestinian leadership has made bad decisions because they are poor
leaders.” The finger is often pointed at corruption, or at the
difficulties of the international context that limit available
political options.

What is missing from this type of
explanation is a blunt fact: some Palestinians have a great stake in
seeing the continuation of the status quo. Over the last two decades,
the evolution of Israeli rule has produced profound changes in the
nature of Palestinian society. These changes have been concentrated
in the West Bank, cultivating a social base that supports the
political trajectory of the Palestinian leadership in its eagerness
to relinquish Palestinian rights in return for being incorporated
into the structures of Israeli settler-colonialism. It is this
process of socioeconomic transformation that explains the Palestinian
leadership’s submission to Oslo, and it points to the need for a
radical break from the two-state strategy.

The Social Base of
Oslo and the Two-State Strategy

The unfolding of the Oslo process
was ultimately shaped by the structures of occupation laid down by
Israel in the preceding decades. During this period, the Israeli
government launched a systematic campaign to confiscate Palestinian
land and construct settlements in the areas from which Palestinians
had been driven out during the 1967 war. The logic of this settlement
construction was embodied in two major strategic plans, the Allon
Plan (1967) and the Sharon Plan (1981). Both these plans envisaged
Israeli settlements placed between major Palestinian population
centers and on top of water aquifers and fertile agricultural land.
An Israeli-only road network would eventually connect these
settlements to each other and also to Israeli cities outside of the
West Bank. In this way, Israel could seize land and resources, divide
Palestinian areas from each other, and avoid direct responsibility
for the Palestinian population as much as possible. The asymmetry of
Israeli and Palestinian control over land, resources, and economy
meant that the contours of Palestinian state-formation were
completely dependent on Israeli design.

Combined with military-enforced
restrictions on the movement of Palestinian farmers and their access
to water and other resources, the massive waves of land confiscation
and settlement-building during the first two decades of the
occupation transformed Palestinian landownership and modes of social
reproduction. From 1967 to 1974, the amount of cultivated Palestinian
land in the West Bank fell by about one third. The expropriation of
land in the Jordan Valley by Israeli settlers meant that 87% of all
irrigated land in the West Bank was removed from Palestinian hands.
Military orders forbade the drilling of new wells for agricultural
purposes and restricted overall water use by Palestinians, while
Israeli settlers were encouraged to use as much water as needed.

With this deliberate destruction of
the agricultural sector, poorer Palestinians — particularly youth —
were displaced from rural areas and gravitated toward work in the
construction and agriculture sectors inside Israel. In 1970, the
agricultural sector included over 40% of the Palestinian labor force
working in the West Bank. By 1987, this figure was down to only 26%.
Palestinian agriculture’s share of GDP fell from 35% to 16% between
1970 and 1991.

Under the framework established by
the Oslo Accords, Israel seamlessly incorporated these changes to the
West Bank into a comprehensive system of control. Palestinian land
was gradually transformed into a patchwork of isolated enclaves, with
the three main clusters in the north, center, and south of the West
Bank divided from one another by settlement blocs. The Palestinian
Authority was granted limited autonomy in the areas where most
Palestinians lived (the so-called Areas A and B), but travel between
these areas could be shut down at any time by the Israeli military.
All movement to and from Areas A and B, as well as the determination
of residency rights in these areas, was under Israeli authority.
Israel also controlled the vast majority of water aquifers, all
underground resources, and all airspace in the West Bank.
Palestinians thus relied on Israeli discretion for their water and
energy supplies.

Israel’s complete control over
all external borders, codified in the 1994 Paris Protocol on Economic
Relations between the PA and Israel, meant that it was impossible for
the Palestinian economy to develop meaningful trade relations with a
third country. The Paris Protocol gave Israel the final say on what
the PA was allowed to import and export. The West Bank and Gaza Strip
thus became highly dependent on imported goods, with total imports
ranging between 70% and 80% of GDP. By 2005, the Palestinian Central
Bureau of Statistics estimated that 74% of all imports to the West
Bank and Gaza Strip originated in Israel while 88% of all exports
from those areas were destined for Israel.

With no real economic base, the PA
was completely reliant on external capital flows of aid and loans,
which were again under Israeli control. Between 1995 and 2000, 60% of
the total PA revenue came from indirect taxes collected by the
Israeli government on goods imported from abroad and destined for the
occupied territories. These taxes were collected by the Israeli
government and then transferred to the PA each month according to a
process outlined in the Paris Protocol. The other main source of PA
income came from aid and foreign disbursements by the United States,
Europe, and Arab governments. Indeed, figures for aid measured as a
percentage of Gross National Income indicated that the West Bank and
Gaza Strip were among the most aid-dependent of all regions in the
world.

Changing Labor
Structure

This system of control engendered
two major changes in the socioeconomic structure of Palestinian
society. The first of these related to the nature of Palestinian
labor, which increasingly became a tap that could be turned on or off
according to the economic and political situation and the needs of
Israeli capital. Beginning in 1993, Israel consciously moved to
substitute the Palestinian labor force that commuted daily from the
West Bank with foreign workers from Asia and Eastern Europe. This
substitution was partly enabled by the declining importance of
construction and agriculture as Israel’s economy shifted away from
those sectors toward high-tech industries and exports of finance
capital in the 1990s.Between 1992 and 1996, Palestinian
employment in Israel declined from 116,000 workers (33% of the
Palestinian labor force) to 28,100 (6% of the Palestinian labor
force). Earnings from work in Israel collapsed from 25% of
Palestinian GNP in 1992 to 6% in 1996. Between 1997 and 1999, an
upturn in the Israeli economy saw the absolute numbers of Palestinian
workers increase to approximately pre-1993 levels, but the proportion
of the Palestinian labor force working inside Israel was nonetheless
almost half of what it had been a decade earlier.

Instead of working inside Israel,
Palestinians became increasingly dependent on public-sector
employment within the PA or on transfer payments made by the PA to
families of prisoners, martyrs, or the needy. Public-sector
employment made up nearly a quarter of total employment in the West
Bank and Gaza Strip by 2000, a level that had almost doubled since
1996. More than half of the PA’s expenditures went to wages for
these public-sector workers. The private sector also provided
substantial employment, particularly in the area of services. These
were overwhelmingly dominated by small family-owned businesses —
over 90% of Palestinian private-sector businesses employ fewer than
ten people — as a result of decades of Israeli de-development
policies.

Capital and the
Palestinian Authority

Alongside the increasing dependence
of Palestinian families on either employment or payments from the
Palestinian Authority, the second major feature of the socioeconomic
transformation of the West Bank was related to the nature of the
Palestinian capitalist class. In a situation of weak local production
and extremely high dependence on imports and flows of foreign
capital, the economic power of the Palestinian capitalist class in
the West Bank did not stem from local industry, but rather proximity
to the PA as the main conduit of external capital inflows. Through
the Oslo years, this class came together through the fusion of three
distinct social groups: “returnee” capitalists, mostly from a
Palestinian bourgeoisie that had emerged in the Gulf Arab states and
held strong ties to the nascent Palestinian Authority; families and
individuals who had historically dominated Palestinian society, often
large landowners from the pre-1967 period, particularly in the
Northern areas of the West Bank; and those who had managed to
accumulate wealth through their position as interlocutors within the
occupation since 1967.

While the memberships of these
three groups overlapped considerably, the first was particularly
significant to the nature of state and class formation in the West
Bank. Gulf-based financial flows had long played a major role in
tempering the radical edge of Palestinian nationalism; but their
conjoining with the Oslo state-building process radically deepened
the tendencies of statization and bureaucratization within the
Palestinian national project itself.

This new three-sided configuration
of the capitalist class tended to draw its wealth from a privileged
relationship with the Palestinian Authority, which assisted its
growth by granting monopolies for goods like cement, petroleum,
flour, steel, and cigarettes; issuing exclusive import permits and
customs exemptions; giving sole rights to distribute goods in the
West Bank and Gaza Strip; and distributing government-owned land
below its value. In addition to these state-assisted forms of
accumulation, much of the investment that came into the West Bank
from foreign donors through the Oslo years — infrastructure
construction, new building projects, agricultural and tourist
developments — were also typically connected to this new capitalist
class in some way.

In the context of the PA’s fully
subordinated position, the ability to accumulate was always tied to
Israeli consent and thus came with a political price — one designed
to buy compliance with ongoing colonization and enforced surrender.
It also meant that the key components of the Palestinian elite —
the wealthiest businessmen, the PA’s state bureaucracy and the
remnants of the PLO itself — came to share a common interest in
Israel’s political project. The rampant spread of patronage and
corruption were the logical byproducts of this system, as individual
survival depended on personal relationships with the Palestinian
Authority. The systemic corruption of the PA that Israel and Western
governments regularly decried throughout the 1990s and 2000s, was, in
other words, a necessary and inevitable consequence of the very
system that these powers had themselves established.

The Neoliberal
Turn

These two major features of the
Palestinian class structure — a labor force dependent on employment
by the Palestinian Authority, and a capitalist class imbricated with
Israeli rule through the institutions of the PA itself — continued
to characterize Palestinian society in the West Bank through the
first decade of the 2000s. The division of the West Bank and Gaza
Strip between Fatah and Hamas in 2007 strengthened this structure,
with the West Bank subject to ever more complex movement restrictions
and economic control. Simultaneously, Gaza developed in a different
trajectory, with Hamas rule reliant on profits drawn from the tunnel
trade and aid from states like Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

In recent years, however, there has
been an important shift in the economic trajectory of the Palestinian
Authority, encapsulated in a harsh neoliberal program premised on
public-sector austerity and a development model aimed at further
integrating Palestinian and Israeli capital in export-oriented
industrial zones. This economic strategy only acts to further tie the
interests of Palestinian capital with those of Israel, building
culpability for Israeli colonialism into the very structures of the
Palestinian economy. It has produced increasing poverty levels and a
growing polarization of wealth. In the West Bank, real per-capita GDP
increased from just over $1,400 in 2007 to around $1,900 in 2010, the
fastest growth in a decade. At the same time, the unemployment rate
remained essentially constant at around 20%, among the highest in the
world. One of the consequences was a profound level of poverty:
around 20% of Palestinians in the West Bank were living on less than
$1.67 a day for a family of five in 2009 and 2010. Despite these
poverty levels, the consumption of the richest 10% increased to 22.5%
of the total in 2010.

In these circumstances, growth has
been based on prodigious increases in debt-based spending on services
and real estate. According to the United Nations Conference on Trade
and Development (UNCTAD), the hotel and restaurant sector grew by 46%
in 2010 while construction increased by 36%. At the same time,
manufacturing decreased by 6%. The massive levels of consumer-based
debt levels are indicated in figures from the Palestinian Monetary
Authority, which show that the amount of bank credit almost doubled
between 2008 and 2010. Much of this involved consumer-based spending
on residential real estate, automobile purchases, or credit cards;
the amount of credit extended for these three sectors increased by a
remarkable 245% between 2008 and 2011. These forms of individual
consumer and household debt potentially carry deep implications for
how people view their capacities for social struggle and their
relation to society. Increasingly caught in a web of financial
relationships, individuals seek to satisfy their needs through the
market, usually by borrowing money, rather than through collective
struggle for social rights. The growth of these financial and
debt-based relations thus individualizes Palestinian society. It has
had a conservatizing influence over the latter half of the 2000s,
with much of the population concerned with “stability” and the
ability to pay off debt rather than the possibility of popular
resistance.

Beyond the
Impasse?

The current cul-de-sac of
Palestinian political strategy is inseparable from the question of
class. The two-state strategy embodied in Oslo has produced a social
class that draws significant benefits from its position atop the
negotiation process and its linkages with the structures of
occupation. This is the ultimate reason for the PA’s supine
political stance, and it means that a central aspect of rebuilding
Palestinian resistance must necessarily confront the position of
these elites. Over the last few years, there have been some
encouraging signs on this front, with the emergence of protest
movements that have taken up the deteriorating economic conditions in
the West Bank and explicitly targeted the PA’s role in contributing
to them. But as long as the major Palestinian political parties
continue to subordinate questions of class to the supposed need for
national unity, it will be difficult for these movements to find
deeper traction.

Moreover, the history of the last
two decades shows that the “hawks and doves” model of Israeli
politics, so popular in the perfunctory coverage of the corporate
media and wholeheartedly shared by the Palestinian leadership in the
West Bank, is decidedly false. Force has been the essential midwife
of “peace negotiations.” Indeed, the expansion of settlements,
restrictions on movement, and the permanence of military power have
made possible the codification of Israeli control through the Oslo
Accords. This is not to deny that substantive differences exist
between various political forces within Israel; but rather to argue
that these differences exist along a continuum rather than in sharp
disjuncture. Violence and negotiations are complementary and mutually
reinforcing aspects of a common political project, shared by all
mainstream parties, and both act in tandem to deepen Israeli control
over Palestinian life. The last two decades have powerfully confirmed
this fact.

The reality of Israeli control
today is the outcome of a single process that has necessarily
combined violence and the illusion of negotiations as a peaceful
alternative. The counterposing of right-wing extremists with a
so-called Israeli peace camp acts to obfuscate the centrality of
force and colonial control embodied in the political program of the
latter.

The reason for this is the shared
assumption of the Zionist left and right wings that Palestinian
rights can be reduced to the question of a state in some part of
historic Palestine. The reality is that the overriding project of the
last sixty-three years of colonization in Palestine has been the
attempt by successive Israeli governments to divide and fracture the
Palestinian people, attempting to destroy a cohesive national
identity by separating them from one another. This process is clearly
illustrated by the different categories of Palestinians: refugees,
who remain scattered in camps across the region; those who remained
on their land in 1948 and later became citizens of the Israeli state;
those living in the isolated cantons of the West Bank; and now those
separated by the fragmenting of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. All of
these groups of people constitute the Palestinian nation, but the
denial of their unity has been the overriding logic of colonization
since before 1948. Both the Zionist left and right agree with this
logic, and have acted in unison to narrow the Palestinian “question”
to isolated fragments of the nation as a whole. This logic is also
one wholeheartedly accepted by the Palestinian Authority and is
embodied in its vision of a “two-state solution.”

Oslo may be dead, but its putrid
corpse is not one that any Palestinian should hope to resuscitate.
What is needed is a new political orientation that rejects the
fracturing of Palestinian identity into scattered geographical zones.
It is encouraging to see the mounting chorus of calls for a
reorientation of Palestinian strategy, based on a single state in all
of historic Palestine. Such an outcome will not be achieved solely
through Palestinian efforts. It requires a broader challenge to
Israel’s privileged relationship with the US and its position as a
key pillar of US power in the Middle East. But a one-state strategy
presents a vision for Palestine that confirms the essential unity of
all sectors of the Palestinian people regardless of geography. It also provides a path to reach
out to the Israeli people that reject Zionism and colonialism through
the hope of a future society that does not discriminate on the basis
of national identity, and in which all may live regardless of
religion or ethnicity. It is this vision that provides a route to
achieving both peace and justice.

Monday, September 2, 2013

Dear friends,
this weekend in Australia, we saw
once again the spectacle of several Rupert Murdoch owned newspapers
engaged in yellow journalism. For those who are not aware of the term
“yellow journalism”, it originated in the late nineteenth century
in relation to newspapers which downplayed genuine news in favour of sensationalism, biased reporting and popularism. It was marked by a reliance on bold type, eye-catching and/or misleading headlines, exaggeration,
scandal-mongering and sensationalism. Other hallmarks of yellow journalism include the use of fake
interviews and an over abundance of (often colour) photos and illustrations in
place of actual text. In other words, it is "reportage"
which is unprofessional and unworthy of the designation
"journalism".In Sydney, we had the
spectacle once again of the Daily Telegraph - in this case the
Sunday Telegraph - running a full front page election cover
touting for the Liberal Party. Laughable, the Sunday Telegraph's
editorial had the audacity to declare "as always, the Sunday
Telegraph will be here as a critical voice for our readers. We
are not, and have never been, cheerleaders for any one side of
politics".
At the same time that the
Sunday Telegraph ran their cover and editorial, Murdoch's
Australian flagship paper, The Australian continued its yellow
journalism in relation to the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and
Sanctions (BDS) campaign by running an article on 31 August, which
falsely attributed a quote to Palestine solidarity activist, Damian
Ridgwell.

Ridgwell on his Facebook noted:

In their ever raging war on BDS
and Palestine supporters, the Australian not only cheer on fining
protesters, but also just resort to making shit up. As they have
attributed a quote to me that is totally fictional... can you guess
which one?

The article in question was
written
by Christian Kerr, a former Liberal Party staffer and advisor
to the Howard government. Kerr's article focused on the Liberal
dominated Parramatta
City Council denying the use of public space in the Church St Mall
for a pro-Palestine, pro-BDS rally in mid August 2013. In addition to
denying the right to use the public space, the Council also threatened
activists with heavy fines if the rally went ahead. The denial was
despite the fact
that hundreds of public rallies and speakouts have taken place in the
Church St Mall over the years with little problem and despite the
fact that the pro-Palestine rally has received police approval.

Poster for Parramatta Rally

The
Palestine Action Group (PAG), who organised the rally, refused to
have their free speech and the right to freedom of assembly curtailed
and went ahead with the non-violent rally. PAG now face fines of
$2200 for exercising their right to non-violent free speech in
Parramatta. For PAG's statement/media release on the attempt to politically censor and ban the rally, click here.

The quote attributed by Kerr in his 31 August 2013
article to Ridgwell was the same exact quote attributed by Kerr to
another Palestine solidarity activist, Patrick Harrison, in an
earlier article in The Australian on
2 May 2013. In the earlier 2 May article, Kerr quoted Harrison as
saying “there isn't really any connection” between Max Brenner in
Australia and Israel. However, Kerr decontextualised the
quote in order to imply that the BDS protests against Brenner were
not legitimate. In the video embedded alongside Kerr's article,
Harrison noted that the Max Brenner shops in Australia were franchises and as such were not directly connected
“financially” to Israel.

The Palestine Action Group noted in a
statement in response to Kerr's 2 May beat-up that:

Palestine solidarity
activists are bemused that the Australian has given front page
coverage to this “scoop”. The Youtube of the rally in question,
which took place on September 21, 2012, has also just been released.
The “exclusive” report quoting Patrick Harrison, a spokesperson
from the Palestine Action Group, is taken from in a sarcastic Youtube
made byJeremy Moses from Varietygarage.com.

The article tries to
make out that Mr Harrison is undermining his own cause by
“acknowledging” that boycotting the Max Brenner outlet in
Parramatta will have no financial impact on its parent company in
Israel. It also alleges that Max Brenner International “has
absolutely no holding” in Max Brenner Australia.

But just because the
parent company doesn’t hold shares in the Australian Max Brenner
doesn’t mean that the franchisee is not connected to the parent
company. Often the franchise company takes a cut and charges the
franchise holder fees for the name and sometimes the equipment and
supplies.

You can read the full PAG
statement here, as well as my earlier blog comments on Kerr's 2 May
article and the distortions contained within the article.

Damian
Ridgwell noted in relation to Kerr's latest anti-BDS article that:
"I've written to them [the newspaper], it would be a change to have some
truth
in The Australian". The Australian has since deleted Ridgwell's
name but have now attributed the decontextualised quote to a
fictional person called Patrick Hamilton (Please see screenshots
below of the original Kerr article from 2 May, as well as his current
August 31 article and its updated version).

The new version of the
article with the name Patrick Hamilton contains the following editors
note at the end of the article:

Editor's note: An
earlier version of this story attributed the quote "there isn't
really any connection" between the chain of chocolate shops in
this country and Israel to Damian Ridgwell. The comment was made by
Patrick Hamilton.

As
already mentioned, there is no such person as Patrick Hamilton (within
the context of Kerr's earlier article), a fact Kerr should be aware
of given he wrote the 2 May 2013 article which attributed the quote
to Patrick Harrison. As of 3 September - three days after the
publication of the article and the removal of Ridgwell's name - the
fictional name of Patrick Hamilton remains in Kerr's article and has not
been corrected.

The mis-attribution of the original
decontextualised quote, twice, along with the failure to fact check the name and the
reliance on satirical videos as apparent credible sources of information in the original 2 May article by Kerr, shows the shoddy lack of concern for any resemblance of
accuracy or research or honest reporting on BDS by The Australian. In addition, it reveals the shoddy nature of Kerr's reporting and The
Australian's yellow journalism.

As I demonstrated in my Overland
article, A Case Study in Obsession, the yellow journalism of The Australian and its obsession with BDS has been evident for sometime. In May 2013 The Australian ran 26 items on BDS in
that month alone. The vast majority of these items were
overwhelmingly negative, condemning the Palestinian BDS campaign and
Palestine supporters as anti-Semitic and running an intolerant hate
campaign. In contrast, during this same period, the Fairfax
newspapers had run a total of two different news articles on BDS
between them.

Professor Jake Lynch

It should be noted that
earlier in the week prior to publishing the article about the
Parramatta City Council fines, The Australian, also ran
several negative articles on BDS in relation to a speakout on Sydney Uni in defence of BDS and
the Sydney Uni academics, Jake Lynch and Stuart Rees. Lynch and Rees have been
targeted by the Zionist organisation, Shurat HaDin which have filed a
complaint against at the Australian Human Rights Commission, claiming
that BDS breaches the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act. However, BDS
does not in anyway breach the act as it does not target any
individual or even organisation or business based on race, colour,
national or ethnic origin. Instead, as Jake Lynch noted in an interview he did with the Jerusalem Post on 27 August, the reason he and Rees are being targeted is because BDS works. Lynch
told the Jerusalem Post that "supporters of the military-security lobby
in Israel are stepping up their attacks on BDS because it is beginning
to take effect".

Shurat
HaDin similarly threatened
legal action last year against World Vision Australia and AusAid
(the Australian Government Overseas Aid Program) claiming they were
providing financial aid to Gaza based terrorist group via the Union of
Agricultural Work
Committees (UAWC).After suspending their aid program
and investigating the allegation, both World Vision and AusAid announced
that the accusations were not credible and resumed funding. For a more
detailed response by World Vision Australia
to Shurat HaDin's allegations and Shurat HaDin's continued claims,
please click here and here.

Shurat
HaDin is one of the many Zionist groups engaged in what is known as
"Lawfare", as well as hasbara (propaganda), attempts to
silence BDS and intimidate pro-Palestine and BDS supporters.
"Lawfare" is a portmanteau of the words "law" and
"warfare" and is used to try and legally damage an
opponent. Lawfare proponents regularly utilises what are known as "Strategic
Lawsuit Against Public Participation" or SLAPP suits in order to try and censor, intimidate and silence critics by
burdening them with the cost of a legal defense until they abandon
their criticism or opposition. The typical SLAPP plaintiff does not
normally expect to win the lawsuit. The plaintiff's goals are
accomplished if the defendant succumbs to fear, intimidation,
mounting legal costs or simple exhaustion and abandons the criticism.
A SLAPP may also be used in order intimidate others from
participating in the debate.

Such suits by Zionists groups
against Pro-Palestine solidarity activists have so far had little
success with courts and government departments in Australia, France, Scotland,
England, the USA and elsewhere dismissing legal cases and claims, either
acquitting pro-Palestine activists or dismissing the Zionist claims.

The Australian's yellow journalism and
obsession with BDS is unlikely to end any time soon. And neither
will the Lawfare attempts (either in Australia or internationally) in
order to try either criminalise support for BDS and/or intimidate
pro-Palestine activists from speaking out publicly in support of the
campaign and the struggle of the Palestinian people. All such attempts
must be strongly rejected, whether such attempts are done by newspapers,
politicians or hasbara groups. As human rights activists, who
support the struggle of the Palestinian people for justice,
self-determination and human rights, we must never allow the media or
threats of Lawfare to convince us that it is wrong to fight against
power and to stand up for the rights of the oppressed. Instead, we must redouble
our efforts and speak up even louder in support of not only the
Palestinian people and their struggle but also in support of the struggles of all the oppressed people of the world.

in solidarity, Kim

**** SCREEN SHOTS:

The original version of Kerr's article falsely attributing, in the third paragraph, a quote to PAG activist, Damian Ridgwell.

Update of Kerr's article on 1 September 2013, attributing the quote in the third paragraph to the fictional person, Patrick Hamilton.

Christian Kerr's 2 May article with his "scoop" with the decontextualised quotes from Patrick Harrison

Nakba Keys

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About Me

I am an activist who, at different times over several years, has lived and worked as a international volunteer in the West Bank of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. This blog is an account of my time in Palestine and also carries original news, comment and analysis (as well as reprints) on Palestine. Live from Occupied Palestine campaigns for an end to Israeli apartheid and the brutal illegal occupation of the Palestinian people. You are welcome to reprint any material from this blog authored by Kim, however, please acknowledge the author and the blog website